Only That
by LoveFromShinola
Summary: Gomez wakes one morning to live his one true torture...


**AN:**

**Okay, so now that I've done two cheerful Addams Family fics, it's time for an angsty one-shot. I've been trying to figure out things about the Addamses that we aren't explicitly told. I think that they are impervious to most harm and have developed defences against most things, but of course, looking at the size of their graveyard and by what they say, they are not immortal. I think the only thing besides beheading/continuous stabbing and all that jazz that could take out the Addamses is that horrible killer old age. So, while Gomez and Morticia are old in this story, Morticia hasn't outwardly aged. Well, we can't take it all away from them, now can we?**

He has never been less happy at a death. The times they have fantasised together about this moment: six feet under, their cadavers slowly rotting beside each other for all eternity. But, as of yet, that is not to be so. He, grey-haired and old, lives on, while she, ever her fresh-faced self, is gone.

He woke and touched her hair as she lay in her customary position on his chest. But somehow she had been heavier than usual, somehow he had sensed it. Somehow, he had known. She was icy cold to the touch and he had lain for an hour unmoving. If he moved, that would be the end. If he moved, it would be for certain. How could he bear to live on in this agony, knowing that half of his soul had left him behind? It was absurd and irrational, to cry over a corpse. Death was a thing to be rejoiced, as much as a wedding or a birth. Death was passing to a higher, darker plain of existence in the everlasting life that came when this one closed. His family had celebrated death as a happy occasion for generations past. He had met her at a funeral and as she sat draped in black, pale and mysterious, he had sworn to have her for his bride and so he had that very night.

For the first time in his life, death was met with heart-wrenching, blinding, all-consuming woe. It was not a good unhappiness, this torture that he felt. It was the worst pain he had ever experienced. He was aware, keenly aware, that he was crying. His hand was still in her hair and he made circles across the black silk of it, he laid his nose to the top of her head and breathed in that scent. Her scent, that for years had meant home.

_Tish?_

_Tish, cara mia…_

He did not realise he was keening, quietly, aloud, until a few good minutes of doing so. Being this way was going against every belief he had ever had, but in this moment, Gomez Addams, the upholder of familial tradition, could care no less for how an Addams was expected to act. He had never allowed himself to wonder what Morticia's death would do to him. He had always taken it for granted that he would be the first, that he would wait for her and she would swiftly join him. If not, he had surmised they would die romantically, together, taken out by some grotesque, painful method which would have them live on forever in legend. Never in his wildest, sweetest imaginings had he ever thought of this. This scenario was unacceptable, it was unrealistic, and it was _bizarre._

How could he still be breathing, when her breath was gone? How could he still be thinking, when her glorious mind was not? How were his lips still moving, when he could no longer hear her voice? For decades she had been his very essence. She had been as necessary to him as air, as nourishment, as dark, dank spaces. Her voice had been his conscience, her strength his strength, her pain his greater hurt. They had been two halves of a whole. She had given him his greatest achievements, his three children, her three children, _their _three children. With one another, through their passions and their love, they had created a trio of lives that now lived on, independent from them.

Wednesday had married and maimed, Pugsley was illegally successful, Pubert was a work of magical and acrobatically genius. Without her, without this wonderful woman as his wife, he would never have lived as full a life. Had she turned him down, he envisaged himself lost and heartbroken, stumbling, unloved. He envisaged himself precisely as he now felt. His children had gone and though they still idolised him, they no longer needed him quite the same. Fester had married and moved, Thing and Lurch were growing slower every day and Grandmamma had long since passed. All this he thought as he lay there, in denial, still maddeningly running his fingers through her hair.

He needed to see her face. That face that he adored, cherished and worshipped. He took hold of her smooth shoulders and brought her to her pillow, unused and grey. There she was, perfect as ever. It was the old cliché. She did indeed appear as if sleeping.

'Oh, Tish.' He breathed, hardly daring to formally break the silence. The ordinary graveyard quiet of the house had now become heavily so, so heavy he could not stomach it much longer. '_Cara mia.' _He whispered in her ear, across her sweet face, in the line of her graceful neck and down the curve of her body. He would give anything and every worldly object he possessed to hear her answer him in their often-heard way. To see those darling lips open, to hear French roll from her tongue and ignite her personal, very own flame within him.

_Mon cher._

Never again on this Earth and in this plane of existence would he hear those words. She had sighed them to him, as she always did, while they were dozing in the beginnings of sleep. He had taken it for granted, he had only half-heard her, lost in the shadowy land of dream. Now he wished, as was normally the case, he had remembered every detail of her. He felt, stupidly, that he was already beginning to forget her, this woman whose every action was engraved with a wonderfully red hot poker on his heart.

He pulled her to him, still silently crying and planted a kiss on her frozen cheek. Soon he must wake the house, soon the word would spread. Soon everyone would know and they would descend and she would be taken from him. For now, he would not think of later. For now he would hold her in his arms, this extension of his being, this paragon of wife, mother and lover. This possessor of his heart, torturer of his passions, keeper of his greatest desires, fulfiller of his every wish. He would let her go, when the time came, but only physically. In his mind and in his love, she would be alive, until they met again, when death welcomed him into its embrace.

As they had always wished for themselves, death had taken them in his arms together. Their great romance was fittingly completed and in the grounds of the Addams house they were buried, side by side, forever.

_To live without you…only that would be torture…_

**AN:**

**Please review! So sad…**


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